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SpaceX Catches the Starship to end Flight 15

156 points ls612 25 minutes ago 70 comments

inglor_cz 24 minutes ago | parent

Damn, that looked smooth and glorious. This is how I'd like the future to be.

ryzvonusef 24 minutes ago | parent

Holy ship, it was picture perfect capture!

ceejayoz 23 minutes ago | parent

Damned impressive.

andsoitis 23 minutes ago | parent

That was incredible to watch!

Huge congratulations to the team.

delichon 22 minutes ago | parent

Congratulations to the steely eyed missile men and women of SpaceX.

inglor_cz 17 minutes ago | parent

I wonder if John Aaron was watching. Or Gene Kranz. Both are still alive.

yokoprime 21 minutes ago | parent

That was incredible impressive, what a feat of engineering!

Narishma 21 minutes ago | parent

Do we know why they didn't try to catch the booster?

panick21_ 20 minutes ago | parent

Apparently the booster signaled it didn't have enough fuel to risk it. Either because it consumed more then expected on the way up, or a measurement error potentially.

bavell 18 minutes ago | parent

I heard somewhere the engine efficiency is still somewhat variable so they burned more fuel than anticipated.

quotemstr 15 minutes ago | parent

That's basically what Musk said, yes: that they need to work on both engine performance and performance consistency. He said they'd be cutting off the main engines one second sooner to provide more margin for boost-back.

Amazing that a one-second difference can matter, but those things go through tons of fuel every one of those seconds!

Laremere 13 minutes ago | parent

At the last moment the exhaust turned green. That's consistent with the fuel running out, the engines running oxygen rich, and subsequently "engine rich". So I would put my money on actually running out vs a measurement error.

proee 19 minutes ago | parent

Two reasons floating around. 1.)They lost communication with tower 2.)They ran out of fuel for safe land.

source: Scott Manley https://youtube.com/shorts/m2oGDCvDmdE?si=0AlX8sgHDihXCED6

DarmokJalad1701 19 minutes ago | parent

Slight underperformance in the engines resulted in the the booster not reaching where it was supposed to be and the GNC systems automatically aborted to the gulf for safety.

inglor_cz 19 minutes ago | parent

"Slightly low on fuel."

If I understand correctly, the margin was tight enough not to take the risk of damaging the tower.

quotemstr 14 minutes ago | parent

And if the landing footage is any indication, it sure looks like they would have made the catch anyway if they'd gone for it.

inglor_cz 9 minutes ago | parent

Their risk tolerance would probably be greater if both towers were fully operational. But any damage to the only functional tower during booster catch = an automatic abort to the ship catch one day later, and the ship catch is what was really interesting at this point of development.

ryzvonusef 6 minutes ago | parent

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2121648438144024943

booster was low on fuel, plus no mood of risking tower with boom, boosters are cheaper than towers.

claude-ai 20 minutes ago | parent

So precise it was almost boring - incredible work. Kudos.

rpmisms 20 minutes ago | parent

Holy cow.

comrade1234 19 minutes ago | parent

Ah man I just missed it. The live feed is just stock footage. Any links to the catch?

nomilk 17 minutes ago | parent

Last few minutes here:

https://x.com/spacex/status/2121316300702056595

DarmokJalad1701 19 minutes ago | parent

Insane achievement! It is the dawn of a new era! One that has been 10+ years in the making.

metalman 18 minutes ago | parent

perfect. hyperbole failure moment

rvz 18 minutes ago | parent

This is exactly the most impressive feat of engineering I have ever seen.

Only catching both the booster and the rocket would top this one. But the rocket only being caught is still impressive regardless.

SpaceX below $1T is criminally undervalued.

quotemstr 14 minutes ago | parent

Well, both booster and ship catches have been demonstrated now.

panick21_ 18 minutes ago | parent

Kind of crazy to reduce the hardware on ship so much and move so much complexity to the ground. This can really only happen in a situation where anybody can throw out any dumb idea, because if you suggested this 20 years ago people would think you are an idiot.

quotemstr 16 minutes ago | parent

Impressive how reliable they've made those engines!

cwkoss 16 minutes ago | parent

Reusable stages is very neat, but seems a little crazy to pay the tyranny of the rocket equation twice. I heard one person say that carrying fuel to land over the whole flight means it takes 23x more launches to get an equivalent payload to orbit.

Using modern technology, couldn't disposable first stages be produced much more cheaply than during the space race?

How much of modern manufacturing disposable booster's cost would be fuel vs metal?

rpmisms 15 minutes ago | parent

Fuel is so much cheaper than ships.

motionlessveloc 12 minutes ago | parent

But you need more ship to carry that fuel, which is exactly what the tyranny of the rocket equation refers to.

Ankaios 15 minutes ago | parent

I heard one person say that carrying fuel to land over the whole flight means it takes 23x more launches to get an equivalent payload to orbit.

I recommend talking with people who know more about spaceflight.

2OEH8eoCRo0 11 minutes ago | parent

Starship HLS is estimated to require 22 refueling launches to support 1 moon mission.

wat10000 6 minutes ago | parent

How is that even relevant? The Starship HLS launch won’t be landing the upper stage.

palata 4 minutes ago | parent

> I recommend talking with people who know more about spaceflight.

Yes, because asking on HN if such people would be willing to answer obviously gets you downvotes and comments like this.

blackenedgem 13 minutes ago | parent

It's not paying it twice. The rocket equation is about the ratio of the wet and dry mass, so for an expendable rocket you're always limited by the fact that there's an upper stage (and for the second stage the payload etc).

This is why SpaceX cares more about TWR for their engines than traditional rockets did. It goes from making a negligible difference to a huge component of how much fuel they need to keep for landing.

GenerocUsername 13 minutes ago | parent

Those numbers don't make sense.

It doesn't take the same amount of fuel to land as it does to lift.

Speaking as a Kerbal Space program playing, internet commentor, It's probably <1% of the fuel to briefly counteract terminal velocity as it is to lift off and reach space.

jiggawatts 13 minutes ago | parent

They use the atmosphere to brake, not fuel.

inglor_cz 11 minutes ago | parent

"I heard one person say that carrying fuel to land over the whole flight means it takes 23x more launches to get an equivalent payload to orbit."

I don't think that this is the case when using the atmosphere to shed most of your velocity, which is what we do when landing on Earth. Propulsive braking would be another story, but you can avoid that on bodies that do have some atmosphere. In our proximity, only the Moon and Mercury would need propulsive braking, but Moon's gravity is low and Mercury is hard to visit anyway.

That said, once you use the atmosphere to cushion what is basically a fall, the weight of the necessary heat shield comes to the equation too.

ivewonyoung 10 minutes ago | parent

How is it twice? Braking on the way down doesn't take nearly as much fuel as lift off so the "tyranny of the rocket equation" should be paid only once.

grey-area 9 minutes ago | parent

The booster doesn't go into orbit, starship ends up going 5x as fast. You need a booster to reach orbit though, so it makes sense to recycle the booster too. Why not do it? It doesn't use that much fuel coming back. They can also eventually fly it again quickly in theory (this is easier for the booster due to less stress).

You can be sure they'll have done the math on reusable boosters and it makes sense, or they wouldn't bother.

fghorow 15 minutes ago | parent

Congrats to the engineers.

(But lose the bastard at the top, OK?)

maxglute 15 minutes ago | parent

Feels good.

rpmisms 14 minutes ago | parent

The heat shield looks very good. Excited to see how much work it will take to fly this again. I'm in awe. I like the future sometimes.

losvedir 13 minutes ago | parent

Watched it with my 5 year old daughter (3 year old son was sadly uninterested), and we were both cheering and high fiving. Very exciting.

childintime 13 minutes ago | parent

How many years until the next milestones?

- in orbit refueling

- moon landing

- Mars rendez-vous

- Mars landing

- humans on Mars

Nah, the game is to put data centers in space. Plus the Space Force dreams.

loehnsberg 8 minutes ago | parent

Launches, Starlink, military provide cash. SpaceX needs to be profitable at least to some extent.

shoobiedoo 8 minutes ago | parent

What actually is the point of all this? I'm not trying to be a snarky contrarian, I've never had any interest whatsoever in space, star trek, "what's out there?", so I genuinely don't get it.

I'm not trashing people's interests, obviously I am the odd man out in not giving a damn, I just don't see what we're trying to achieve when there are so many issues we can't even figure out on earth.

bluecalm 7 minutes ago | parent

I mean, you need to get money from somewhere to fund your dreams. If it's datacenters in space then let be it. They are pretty cool as well. It seems a lot of people don't like them on Earth.

motionlessveloc 13 minutes ago | parent

It's difficult to underline how huge this is. This marks the first time in the history of rocketry that the upper stage of a rocket has returned home from orbit to a safe, upright landing.

(And to preempt the obvious objection: yes, maybe you can call the Space Shuttle an "upper stage of a rocket" if you squint hard enough, but it didn't do upright landings, none of its boosters were reusable and even the Shuttle itself was effectively rebuilt from scratch at exorbitant cost each time.)

It's sad to see a lot of media missing the point, eg as I type this BBC is reporting this as "SpaceX successfully catches part of Starship rocket on its return to Earth".

wat10000 8 minutes ago | parent

Whatever you call it, the Shuttle Orbiter wasn’t a complete stage in any case. It needed the external tank, which was never recovered.

SpaceX has now demonstrated all the pieces of a fully reusable launcher. Next comes putting them all together in the same flight, and hopefully demonstrating that the flights can become frequent and cheap. There’s no guarantee of that, but it’s looking good.

palata 6 minutes ago | parent

> and hopefully demonstrating that the flights can become frequent and cheap

So that they can start polluting at a whole new scale. Fingers crossed!

dabluecaboose 5 minutes ago | parent

You can always tell the pearl-clutchers who have no idea what they're talking about when they complain about pollution from space travel.

palata 7 minutes ago | parent

> yes, maybe you can call the Space Shuttle an "upper stage of a rocket" if you squint hard enough

Why wouldn't it count? It is not the first time in the history of rocketry that the part that is not the boosters returns home intact.

Sure, you can say "it's the first time in the history of rocketry that it lands upright", but you could also say "it's the first time in the history of rocketry that it is not white".

If you want to say how huge this is, tell me how different it is from landing the boosters. Because from the outside it sure as hell looks very similar.

james_anderson 11 minutes ago | parent

Best thing ever built and it works!!!

arjie 11 minutes ago | parent

Magical era. What a feat!

bluecalm 11 minutes ago | parent

SpaceX made me watch engineering feats live on stream. I love it!

reactordev 9 minutes ago | parent

The engineering of this is just bind boggling awesome. The culmination of so many fields, so many factors, to this. Congrats!!!

codeulike 8 minutes ago | parent

I like that they wrote "dont panic" on the fuselage above the s42 badge

lovvtide 5 minutes ago | parent

We witnessed history today

thinkingemote 4 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]